Rome, June 2025

During this month of June, we want to learn about how the Venerable Peter Joseph Triest found inspiration in the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus to shape his love for God and God’s love for him.

One of the most beautiful prayers we have been privileged to receive from the Venerable Peter Joseph Triest is the prayer to the Sacred Heart. It testifies to an intense contemplation, a prayerful experience and a true internalization of this devotion. Father Triest contemplated in the Sacred Heart the love of God that became so visible and tangible in the Incarnation, where God Himself became man in His Son Jesus. And it is this love that Jesus showed through His pierced heart, as He had appeared to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque in 1675 at Paray-le-Monial.

"Most lovable Heart of Jesus.
Since You ask my heart,
behold, I give it unto thee.
You alone are worthy of it and only You can make it happy.
I give it to You so that it would heal all the wounds of pride, self-love, attachment to earthly things and even greater attachment to myself, lack of love for my neighbour, in a word, of all my wounds.
Yet let none be left behind except the wound your love will have made.
Jesus Christ, my God,
I only wish for one thing:
a place in your Heart".

The beginning of the prayer is completely embedded in mysticism, where an exchange happens between the Heart of Jesus and one’s own heart. It testifies to a great love between two people, where the heart is considered the place where love finds its origin and expression. What lovers express and show to each other, by letting their two hearts melt into each other, also has its place in mysticism, because since the Old Testament God’s love is compared in several places to the love between two people. The Song of Songs is the strongest expression of this.

By opening himself to this mystical approach to the unification of his own heart with the Heart of Jesus, Father Triest shows how he truly wants to give priority to God’s love and have his own heart completely filled by God’s love. "You alone are worthy and only You can make it happy. Only God’s love can give man total fulfillment and meaning to life, and all other love between people will be strengthened and deepened by this divine love. Father Triest too was searching for happiness, for meaning and fulfillment in his life, and finally found it in opening himself totally to God’s love. Everything else is his life was subordinated to this but at the same time strengthened. This gives perhaps the strongest insight into the spiritual life of Father Triest, who totally rooted his life in God’s love in order to become from there a loving man for many, for all, with a special sensitivity for those who had to lack this love in their lives because of illness, poverty or exclusion in society. It is God’s love that gave him that deep inner peace where no one was a threat to him anymore and where he could face and experience all situations in his life from this peaceful heart. Here we learn the importance of finding meaning in life, true happiness, which we can only receive from God, but which at the same time gives a spiritual dimension to our whole existence. Because in order to become truly fellow human beings with everyone without distinction and in all circumstances, we need that divine grace, God’s love that can bring our human love to the divine level.

But in contact with the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Father Triest immediately discovers his own shortcomings, his own sinfulness and brokenness. He leaves them in review: "pride, self-love, attachment to earthly things and even greater attachment to myself, lack of love for my fellow man, in a word, of like my wounds." It sounds like an examination of conscience where he notes that everything that wounds his heart has its origin in the pride that since the Fall broke man’s original harmony with God. Since then we have indeed lived in a broken harmony, and everything else Father Triest lists is a result of that. Our harmony is broken with God, with ourselves, with fellow man and with the entire surrounding world. It is this brokenness that begs for healing, and again Father Triest must conclude that this can only happen through God. It is with God’s grace and power, as gifts of his special love for us, that we can be healed. It is only when we open ourselves to God’s grace that we will succeed in taking focused steps toward healing our brokenness with our human efforts. And this healing is a lifelong process, but after every relapse into this brokenness, we can be sure of God’s grace, of His strength and help that He continues to give us through His mercy without limit. While the enumeration of all the wounds sounds negative, in the end everything focuses on the positive message that with God and God alone we can truly find redemption and healing. For "I give You my heart because You would heal it," is the prayer with which Father Triest prefaces his examination of conscience.

Then comes a wonderful twist, where the mysticism once again gains the upper hand, when Father Triest prays that "yet no wound should be left, except the wound that thy love shall have made." It reminds me of Bernini’s sculpture in Rome in which an angel wounds the heart of Saint Teresa of Avila with an arrow, and Teresa experiences this as the pinnacle of love and sinks into total ecstasy. The wound, which in normal circumstances causes pain, becomes the place of supreme pleasure and happiness when it originates in God’s love. Here Father Triest involuntarily expresses the depth of his spiritual life, which mystics describe as the supreme happiness when they feel totally absorbed in divine love. It also refers to the pierced Heart of Jesus, who had His Heart pierced out of love for fellow human beings and through which He bestowed redemption and the prospect of resurrection on each of us. This too expresses Father Triest’s willingness to give his life for the good of fellow man, and this out of love, purely out of love. And this is what made him so unique, and which has now also been recognized by the Church in definitively including him among the group of the Venerable on the way to final canonization, and this in order to serve also today as an example and encouragement for all of us who, like Father Triest, are on the way to holiness. The way Father Triest lived out his vocation to holiness may become a true example for all of us.

Let us then conclude this reflection with the words of Father Triest himself as he too concluded his prayer: "Jesus Christ, my God, I desire only one thing: a place in your Heart." May that become our real desire to which we want to give shape very consciously during this June month, the month dedicated to the Sacred Heart. No, it is not a devotion from times long gone, but when we live it as Father Triest did, may this become the basis of our spiritual life and the unique path to holiness, to which we are all called without distinction. But of course, as that other Teresa so beautifully put it, the path to holiness will be different and at the same time unique for each person, just as all flowers bloom in their own way and each in their own way give colour and fragrance to nature. Let us then be that unique flower in our concrete environment and in the life of each day. And it is for this reason that we wish with the Venerable Father Triest to receive a place in the Heart of Jesus, for it is there that we will obtain growth and blossom.

Bro. René Stockman, June 2025.

 Prayer for obtaining the beatification of the Venerable Petrus Jozef Triest and favour in his intercession

Lord Jesus,

Following your example, your servant Peter Joseph Triest completely opened his heart to the Father’s love.
As a result, he became a priest moved in love, concerned for the poor, sick and suffering. By helping and supporting them, he wanted them to share already now in your resurrection joy.
With those who followed him, he translated your gospel message of love into his time and blazed a trail of caritas wherever he went.
Even today, let his memory live on in all places where people live and work from his inspiration.
Let his presence also become alive in the Church by giving him as an example to all believers

We also ask Your favour especially for his intercession: .........
Thus we will understand even better that God is love and that your only will was to live in his love. Amen.